"Leading up to the end of the season — which may or may not be the end of the show — we explore Mac's romantic life a bit," Reiter says. "We basically set that up in the premiere, having that moment where Mac releases the opera tickets into the ocean and symbolically says goodbye to Claire and that chapter of his life. We were hoping that he would be able to move on romantically. It would be a shame if a guy like him could not find love in his life."Dodds will play Christine, a woman from Mac's past. "When Mac first moved to New York and decided to join the police department, Mac was in the police academy with Christine's brother," Reiter says. "So there's a familiarity and an association from way back when. ... But this is a woman all these years later who reaches out to reconnect, more or less to say, 'I read about what you did for the [Brooklyn Wall of Remembrance] and the survivors of 9/11. It snowballs from there."

Reiter says Dodds' character will appear in five episodes. "We'll see the courtship," he says. "If one exists. There are aspects of that relationship that become a little bit complicated, but what we're hoping is to see whether Mac can successfully move on from Claire. It's fun to see him awkwardly go through that."Dodds, 41, co-starred as one of Drew Barrymore's evil stepsisters in Ever After: A Cinderella Story

. She also appeared on such TV shows as House, Lie to Me, and the BBC's MI-5.CSI: NY airs Fridays at 9/8c on CBS. Dodds will first appear in this season's 12th episode, which has not yet been scheduled.